When speaking to Finance departments, we’re seeing two distinct issues:
- Receiving paper invoices
Many buying organisations have been communicating to their suppliers that they are unable to handle paper invoices due to a lack of staff in their offices to pick up and process them, and that they therefore need to switch away from paper to an electronic invoice format.
Before continuing, it’s important to clarify what we mean by electronic invoicing (eInvoicing), as it’s a broadly used term. One could argue that any invoice submitted via an electronic channel is an ‘eInvoice’, including scanned invoices sent by email as PDF images. However, in this instance, that would rely on OCR (Optical Character Recognition) or manual keying. A truly electronic invoice is structured invoice data issued in XML format, created using PO flip or directly entered via a portal, meaning the requirement for manual verification and checking is eliminated, and that leads on to the second challenge...
- Manual data verification
Although better than paper for remote working, a switch to PDF invoices, be it data-layered or just an image, doesn’t solve the problem facing the AP team today.
Many who are at home trying to manually process PDF invoices which are received by email have a number of challenges. First, streamlining the process by which team members handle each invoice, download the PDF from the email, and store it centrally ready for processing. Second, is not having multiple screens to work on and needing to continually move between a PDF and the finance system in order to key in and check the data. This not only slows the process down, but it increases the likelihood of human error. Third, is the challenge of resolving missing and incorrect invoice information, which can be difficult enough when with colleagues in the office. A good example of this is missing PO numbers, a common challenge that is amplified when trying to get hold of people remotely!